The Newspaper La Solidarité.

— The newspaper Solidarité, of which we spoke in the Review of June 1868, continues to occupy itself with Spiritism, in the tone of serious discussion that characterizes that eminently philosophical sheet.

Under the title Psychological Researches concerning Spiritism, the issue of July 1st contains an article, from which we extract the following passages:

“There are very few newspapers that can be called independent. By true independence I mean that which permits one to treat a subject without concern for party, for Church, for school, for faculty, for academy; better still: without concern for the public, for one’s own public of readers and subscribers, and being troubled only with seeking the truth and proclaiming it. The Solidarité has that very rare advantage of confronting even the cancellation of subscriptions, for it lives only by sacrifices, and of being placed too highly in the regions of thought to fear the arrows of ridicule.

“In treating of Spiritism, we knew that we would satisfy no one, neither the believers nor the unbelievers; no one, except, perhaps, those persons who have not taken sides on the question. These know that they do not know. They are the wise; they are few in number.”

The author then describes the material phenomenon of turning tables, which he explains by human electricity, declaring that he sees nothing that points to an external intervention. This is what we have said from the beginning. He continues:

“As long as one has only to explain the automatic movement of objects, one need not go beyond what is obtained in the physical sciences. But the difficulty increases when one comes to phenomena of an intellectual nature.

“The table, after having confined itself to dancing, soon set about answering questions. From then on, how could one doubt that there was an intelligence there? The vague belief in Spirits had given rise to the movement of material objects, for, a priori, it is evident that, without this, they would never have thought of making the tables turn. This belief, finding itself confirmed by appearances, was bound to lead to taking one more step. The Spirit being considered as the cause of the movement of the tables, the thought of interrogating it was bound to come.

“The first intelligent manifestations, says Mr. Allan Kardec, [1] occurred by means of tables that rose and struck a determined number of raps with one foot, answering yes or no, according to the convention, to a question put to them. Afterward more developed answers were obtained through the letters of the alphabet: the movable object rapping a number of raps corresponding to the ordinal number of each letter, one came to formulate words and sentences, answering the questions put. The absolute precision of the answers and their correlation excited admiration. Questioned about its nature, the mysterious being that thus answered declared that it was a Spirit or Genius, gave its name, and furnished various pieces of information on its own account.” “This means of communication was long and inconvenient, as Mr. Allan Kardec very justly observes. It was not long before it was replaced by the basket, then by the planchette. In general, today these means are abandoned, and believers refer to what the medium’s hand mechanically writes, under the dictation of the Spirit.

“It is difficult to know what part the medium has in the more or less inspired productions of his pen; nor is it easy to determine the degree of automatism of a basket or of a planchette, when these objects are placed under living hands. But if correspondence by the table is slow and not very convenient, it allows one to verify the passivity of the instrument. For us, the intellectual relation by means of the table is as well established as that of telegraphic correspondence. The fact is real. It is only a matter of knowing whether the correspondent from beyond the grave exists. Is there a Spirit, an invisible being with whom one corresponds, or are the operators the victims of an illusion and in contact only with themselves? Such is the question. “We attribute to the electricity emitted by the human machine the mechanical movements of the tables; we have to look nowhere else but in the human soul for the agent that imprints upon these movements an intelligent character. Representing electricity as an elastic fluid of extreme subtlety, which is interposed between the molecules of bodies and surrounds them as with an atmosphere, one can very well understand that the soul, thanks to this envelope, makes its action felt upon all the parts of the body, without occupying a determined place therein, and that the unity of the self is, at the same time, everywhere where its atmosphere can reach. Action by contact then extends beyond the periphery of the body, and the etheric or fluidic vibrations, communicating themselves from one atmosphere to another, can produce, between beings in relation, effects at a distance. There is in this a whole world to study. The forces there influence and transform one another according to the dynamic laws known to us, but their effects vary with the rhythm of the molecular movements and according as these movements are exerted by vibration, undulation, or oscillation. But, however it may be with these theories, which are far from having attained the positivity necessary to have a reserved place in Science, nothing opposes our considering the human self as extending to the table the action of its spontaneity, making use of it as of an appendix to its nervous system, in order to manifest voluntary movements. “What most often causes illusion in these kinds of telegraphic correspondences is that the self of each of those present can no longer recognize itself in the resultant of the collectivity. The subjective representation that is formed in the spirit of the medium, by the concurrence of this kind of photography, may resemble none of those present, although, no doubt, the majority have furnished some trait. Nevertheless it is rare, if one observes carefully, that one does not find more particularly the image of one of the operators, who was the passive instrument of the collective force. It is not an extramundane Spirit that speaks in the room, but the spirit of the medium, perhaps doubled by the spirit of some person present who dominates him, often without the knowledge of either one, and exalted by forces that come to him, as from various electromagnetic currents, from the concurrence given by those present. [2] “We have often seen the personality of the medium betray itself by errors of spelling, by historical or geographical errors, which he habitually committed and which could not be attributed to a Spirit truly distinct from his own person.

“One of the most common things in phenomena of this nature is the revelation of secrets that the interrogator did not think were known by anyone; but he forgets that these secrets are known by the one who interrogates, and that the medium can read them in his thought. For this a certain mental relation is necessary; but this derivation is established by a derivation of the nervous current that envelops each individual, more or less as one might divert the electric spark, intercepting the telegraph line and replacing it with a new conducting wire. Such a faculty is much less rare than is thought. The communication of thought is a fact admitted by all persons who have occupied themselves with magnetism, and it is easy for each one to convince himself of the frequency and the reality of the phenomenon. “We are obliged to glide over these very imperfect explanations. They do not suffice, we well know, to invalidate the belief in Spirits in those who think they have palpable proofs of their intervention.

“We cannot oppose to them proofs of the same nature. The belief in spiritual individualities not only has nothing irrational about it, but we consider it as very natural. As you know, our profound conviction is that the human self persists in its identity after death, and that it finds itself, after its separation from the terrestrial organism, with all its previous acquisitions. That the human person is then clothed with an organism of an etheric nature, is what does not seem to us perfectly proven. Thus, the perispirit of these gentlemen does not repel us. What is it, then, that separates us? Nothing fundamental. Nothing, except the insufficiency of their proofs. We do not find that the Spiritist relations between the dead and the living are established by the movements of tables, by correspondences, by dictations. We believe that physical phenomena are explained physically, and that psychic phenomena are caused by forces inherent in the soul of the operators. We speak of what we have seen and studied with much care. Among the inspirations of the mediums, we have known nothing thus far that could not have been produced by a living brain, without the concurrence of any celestial force, and the greater part of their productions is below the intellectual level of the milieu in which we live. “In a forthcoming article, we shall examine the philosophical and religious doctrines of Spiritism, notably those whose synthesis Mr. Allan Kardec presented in his last volume, entitled Genesis According to Spiritism. [3]”

— No doubt there would be much to answer regarding this article. Nevertheless, we shall not refute it, because that would be to repeat what we have many times written on the same subject. We are glad to recognize, with the author, that the distance that still separates him from us is a small thing: it is nothing but the material fact of the direct relations between the visible world and the invisible world. Nevertheless, this small thing is very good by its consequences.

Moreover, it is to be noted that if he does not admit these relations, neither does he deny them in an absolute manner; nor does it even repel his reason to conceive their possibility; indeed, this possibility follows very naturally from what he admits. What he lacks, he says, are the proofs of the fact of the communications. Well then! these proofs will come to him, sooner or later; he will find them, either in the attentive observation of the circumstances that accompany certain mediumistic communications, or in the innumerable variety of the spontaneous manifestations, which used to be produced before Spiritism, and are still produced in persons who do not know it or do not believe in it, and in whom, consequently, one could not admit the influence of a preconceived idea. One would have to be ignorant of the first elements of Spiritism to believe that the fact of the manifestations is produced only among the adepts. While waiting, and even though his conviction should stop there, it would be desirable that all materialists were so to that degree. We must, then, congratulate ourselves on counting him among the men of worth, at least sympathetic to the general idea, and on seeing a newspaper commendable for its serious character and its independence combat together with us the absolute incredulity in matters of spirituality, as well as the abuses that were made of the spiritual principle. We march toward the same end by different roads, but converging toward a common point and drawing nearer and nearer through ideas; some dissensions on questions of detail must not prevent us from extending a hand to one another. In these times of effervescence and of aspiration toward a better state of things, each one brings his stone for the edification of the new world; each one works on his own side, with the means proper to him; Spiritism brings its contingent, which is not yet complete; but as it is not exclusive, it rejects no concurrence; it accepts the good, which can serve the great cause of Humanity, come whence it may, even from its adversaries.

As we said at the beginning, we shall not undertake the refutation of the theory set forth in the Solidarité regarding the source of the intelligent manifestations; on this we shall say only a few words.

As one sees, this theory is none other than one of the first systems that arose at the origin of Spiritism, when experience had not yet elucidated the question. Now, it is well known that such an opinion is today reduced to a few rare individuals. If it were true, why would it not have prevailed? How is it that millions of Spiritists, who for fifteen years have been experimenting throughout the entire world and in all languages, who are recruited, for the most part, from the enlightened class, who count in their ranks men of learning and of incontestable intellectual worth, such as physicians, engineers, magistrates, etc., should have verified the reality of the manifestations, if it did not exist? Can one reasonably admit that all have deceived themselves? That there have not been found among them men endowed with enough good sense and perspicacity to recognize the true cause? As we said, this theory is not new and did not pass unnoticed among the Spiritists; on the contrary, it has been seriously meditated upon and explored by them, and it is precisely because they saw it belied by the facts, powerless to explain them all, that it was abandoned. It is a grave error to believe that the Spiritists came with the preconceived idea of the intervention of Spirits in the manifestations; if it was so with some, the truth is that the greater number did not arrive at belief except after having passed through doubt or incredulity.

It is equally an error to believe that, without the a priori of the belief in Spirits, they would never have decided to make the tables turn. The phenomenon of turning and talking tables was known in the time of Tertullian and, in China, since time immemorial. In Tartary and in Siberia they knew the flying tables (Spiritist Review of October 1859). In certain provinces of Spain they make use of sieves, suspended by the points of scissors. Do those who interrogate think that it is the Spirits who answer? Not at all; ask them what it is and they know nothing: it is the table, it is the sieve, endowed with an unknown force; they interrogate these movements as those of the divining rod, without going beyond the material fact. The modern Spiritist phenomena did not begin with the tables, but with spontaneous raps, given on the walls and on the furniture; these noises caused astonishment, surprised; their manner of percussion had something unusual about it, an intentional character, a persistence that seemed to call attention to a determined point, as when someone knocks to give warning. The first movements of tables or other objects were equally spontaneous, as they still are today in certain individuals who have no knowledge whatever of Spiritism. It happens here as with the greater part of natural phenomena, which are produced daily and yet pass unnoticed, or whose cause remains unknown, until the moment when serious and more enlightened observers pay attention to them, study them, and explore them. Thus, of two contrary theories, born at the same epoch, one grows with time, by force of experience, and becomes general, while the other dies out. In favor of which is there a presumption of truth and of survival? We do not give this as a proof, but as a fact that deserves to be taken into consideration.

Mr. Fauvety bases himself on the fact that he found nothing in the mediumistic communications that surpasses the reach of the brain. Here again is an old objection a hundred times refuted by the Spiritist Doctrine itself. Did Spiritism ever say that Spirits were beings outside of Humanity? On the contrary, it comes to destroy the prejudice that makes of them exceptional beings, angels or demons, intermediaries between man and the divinity, kinds of demigods.

It rests upon the principle that Spirits are none other than men stripped of their material envelope; that the visible world incessantly overflows, through death, into the invisible world, and the latter into the carnal world, through births.

Since Spirits belong to Humanity, why should one wish that they had a superhuman language? We know that some among them know no more, and at times much less, than certain men, since they instruct themselves with these latter; those who were incapable of making masterpieces when alive will not make them as Spirits; the Spirit of a Hottentot will not speak like an academician, and the Spirit of an academician, who is nothing but a human being, will not speak like a god.

It is not, then, in the eccentricity of their ideas and their thoughts, in the exceptional superiority of their style, that one must seek the proof of the spiritual origin of the communications, but in the circumstances that attest that, in a multitude of cases, the thought cannot come from an incarnate being, even though it be of the utmost triviality.

From these facts there stands out the proof of the existence of the invisible world, in the midst of which we live, and for this reason the Spirits of the lowest stage prove it as well as the most elevated. Now, the existence of the invisible world in our midst, an integral part of terrestrial Humanity, outlet of the disincarnated souls and source of the incarnated souls, is a capital, immense fact; it is a whole revolution in beliefs; it is the key to the past and the future of man, which all the philosophers sought in vain, just as the savants sought in vain the key to the astronomical mysteries before knowing the law of gravitation. Let one follow the chain of the forced consequences of this single fact: the existence of the invisible world around us, and one will arrive at a complete, inevitable transformation in ideas, at the destruction of prejudices and of the abuses arising from them and, consequently, at a modification of social relations. This is where Spiritism leads. Its doctrine is the development, the deduction of the consequences of the principal fact, whose existence it has just revealed. These consequences are innumerable, because, little by little, they touch upon all the branches of the social order, as much in the physical as in the moral. This is what all those understand who have taken the trouble to study it seriously, and who will understand it still better later on, but not those who, having seen only its surface, imagine that it lies entirely in a turning table or in the puerile questions about the identity of the Spirits.

For fuller developments on certain questions treated in this article, we refer to the first chapter of Genesis: “Character of the Spiritist revelation.”

[1] Translator’s Note: See The Mediums’ Book, chapter XI: “Sematology and Typtology.”

[2] For an answer to several propositions contained in this article, see The Mediums’ Book, chapter IV; “On systems.” — Introduction to The Spirits’ Book. — What Is Spiritism, chapter I, “Short conference.”

[3] Published in a separate brochure. Price: 15 c.; by post: 20 c.